Slate's Bizbox
politics: Who's winning, who's losing, and why.

The Great Snipe Hunt of 2008Tracking the much discussed Hillary-turned-McCain voters.

By John Dickerson
Posted Friday, June 13, 2008, at 11:23 AM ET
Hillary Clinton supporters. Click image to expand

We're going on a snipe hunt. The quarry: women who supported Hillary and, now that she's lost, will leave the Democrats to vote for McCain. Unlike a true snipe hunt, where you never find your prey, these politically prized voters can be found. In fact, they seem to be everywhere. Hillary supporters leave angry e-mails in my inbox, and they are the topic of stories across the media spectrum, from NPR to Fox News to Slate's "XX Factor." Everyone's got an anecdote. Why, just the other day, a woman told me …

Do these political snipes have as much influence over the presidential race as all the fuss suggests? I'm skeptical. Not so much because I have any clear proof that these women will turn into satisfied Obama customers—they may well not—but because the excessive coverage they're generating reminds me of our snipe hunts in 2004. In that race, disaffected Republicans were supposed to throw over George Bush for John Kerry. Everyone seemed to know a guy poised to make this jump. At the Kerry campaign, top staffers were regularly fielding calls from big contributors who said they had ready-to-defect GOP friends on the line. Kerry should make a major push for these voters, the callers suggested. The campaign didn't do that, because there was no one to court. In the 2004 exit polls, only 6 percent of Republicans voted for Kerry, fewer than voted for Al Gore in 2000.

At the moment, the parallel seems apt. What we know about Hillary-for-McCain voters comes from the same ready anecdotes, dubious polling, blanket news coverage, and mischief-making from the opposing party. I'm not denying that these voters exist. (They've even got a Web site!) I hear from them a lot. Irma, a 51-year-old Hispanic research scientist, sent a note soon after the Democratic Rules and Bylaws Committee came up with a solution for seating the Florida and Michigan delegations:

The Democratic party no longer respects the right of the voter to cast a vote. I know that there are thousands if not millions of people who feel just like me. We will not be forced to cast a vote for Barak Obama. I got through the Reagan and the Bush years—I can stomach 4 years of a McCain Presidency.

I checked in with Irma recently. I'd started to hear a second wave of anecdotes about women who first claimed they'd vote for McCain but then switched back after giving Obama a second look. Irma was not one of them. She was even more opposed to Obama after hearing about his stimulus plan and what she saw as his wishy-washy position on Jerusalem. She thinks he's an inexperienced empty suit.

Those of us who cover the presidential race love women like Irma. She has a strong point of view, and she allows us to write about conflict. This is not only entertaining, it's where you usually find the important fights that influence electoral contests. But the task for all of us looking closely at this race is to put the anger into context.

Let's start with the math. Clinton says 18 million people voted for her. That's about 13 percent of the electorate. Obama wins about 80 percent of the Clinton supporters in a recent poll, which means that the coveted Clinton-for-McCain voters represent about 2.6 percent of the electorate. These voters matter only if they live in one of the 20 or so swing states—they're not going to win Massachusetts for McCain. This means the total number of voters he needs to convince and hold onto is small. But Irma isn't one of them; as it turns out, she doesn't live in a swing state.

VIEW AS SINGLE PAGE
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
John Dickerson is Slate's chief political correspondent and author of On Her Trail. He can be reached at .
Photograph of Sen. Hillary Clinton by Win McNamee/Getty Images.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES

Remarks from the Fray:

I'm in a red state. Speaking purely theoretically, if Hillary Clinton was to run for president in the general election, the only possible way she could win South Carolina is if the entire state was rained on by a major meteor storm that just managed to miss the cities of Columbia and Charleston... and even then she'd only have a ~5% chance.

So, I had the opportunity to be an asshole about my seething dislike of Hillary during the primary... and swear absolutely that I would not vote for her during the general.

I wouldn't have either... because my vote doesn't really matter here.

In 2000, a few hundred voters in Florida determined the entire election... so I'm certain that the ~100,000 Nader supporters in Florida have been kicking themselves for the last 8 miserable years... but I doubt any Nader supporters from New York or Wyoming really worry about what their spiteful vote portended.

The key, in either determining you will cast a spiteful vote or in evaluating the effect of your spiteful vote, is looking at whether you believe your vote makes a difference.

I imagine there will be a lot of spiteful Hillary voters that stay home in West Virginia and Tennessee this year... because there is a perception that those states are simply out-of-play... So who the hell cares how any individual votes. The same will be true of New York and California.

But I imagine that most of the voters in the swing states and the close states will bite their pride and cast the vote they know that they should.

One concern that I have is the fact that the map is changing... and states like North Carolina, Virginia, and even Louisiana, are not nearly as comfortable for Republicans as the Republicans would like... and states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey aren't as comfortable for the Democrats as the Democrats would like.

So the real threat from the disaffected Hillary support is in a traditional solid state that has weaker support than normal... but I expect the horse-race polling will help the Hillary zealots to know whether they need to worry or not. I imagine that if either Obama or McCain has more than a 4-6% lead going into November, you'll see a lot of spite voting... If it's closer than that, you probably won't.

Who wants to sit in the shoes of the Florida Nader voters for the next 4 years?

--Tundrayeti

(To reply, click here.)

Hillary's campaign survived past the New Hampshire primary as a result of sexism—in her advantage. Those near-tears rescued what, to that point, had been a strategic and rhetorical disaster.

If a man had gotten choked up at that New Hampshire diner and said: "I just don't want to see us fall backward," his campaign would have been over.

His opponent (especially Hillary) would have labeled him a wimp, not strong enough to take the pressure of the presidency. And, to be honest, she wouldn't have had to press that label: We all would have thought the same thing. Don't believe me? History has plenty of fairly recent examples.

Sexism goes both ways, Nobamas. I know you want to own that burden. But, to some extent, sexism is a load we all impose on each other and that we all must carry—even if it is distributed unequally.

--SilasPorter

(To reply, click here.)

(6/13)

Washington Post